rotnkornkid

Looking for any advice or reassurance at least that I don't need to worry. I have two one-way tickets tonight (for two different passengers) from MIA to SFO that were both upgraded from coach with a Business ExtrAA certificate; let's call them reservations A and B. The upgrades are confirmed for both A and B, and they were both in the same fare class when purchased.

For reservation A, I was able to check-in without any issues. For reservation B, I keep getting an error saying we need to check-in at the airport. I am seeing this error when attempting to check-in on the web as well as in the app. Today, I realized that the AAdvantage # wasn't added to reservation B, so I added it. Now, when I try to check-in on my computer, I am seeing a new screen that says I need to buy 500-mile upgrades to check-in (see screenshot below).

I have spoken to AA reservations, web support, and Business ExtrAA customer service and they all say the ticket is totally fine. But I have trust issues and am confused why reservation A had no issues but B does. Any ideas/thoughts?!

rotnkornkid

Any thoughts here? The flight is in a few hours and trying to make a call on if we need to head there early or not.

dc10forlife

I have not been able to check in online before with the BE upgrade, but that was in the day when a physical certificate was required. I don't know if that is the case now.

Also, on one occasion, meeting services booked me into first on an upgrade with an ineligible fare class (which I did not realize at the time). That took 30 or so minutes at the airport to resolve.

I would get to the airport a bit early.

mvoight

I would go to the airport early.

donotblink

Is the reservation validated in R or C? It should be C but if it was looking for 500 mile upgrades, that suggests it might be in R.

Uzzar

I am curious about what happened with this last night, hope OP comes back to update

miadukes

Yes, looking for an update too as we have an MIA-LAX flight in two weeks with a Business Extra upgrade and want to know if this will happen too.

Ty Vil

I had this exact same problem a few weeks ago. It took 30 minutes at the ticket counter at PHX to get it sorted.

miadukes

Ok so just our luck this is happening on one of our tickets......for flight tomorrow, sigh...

ETA: Just for future reference, we had to end up buying the 2 additional stickers and then were able to check in online. The stickers have not been used obviously but still had to get them. We did it over phone then bought. We probably could have waited until airport but didn't want to hassle at airport and we will undoubtedly use the stickers anyway.

mvoight

Wasn't needed. The AAgent at DFW had no issue with a 2 separate BE upgrades from DFW-LAX. It only seemed to take slightly more time than normal check in.
So, I guess the only issue is online check-in

BeantownFlyer

I am having this same issue, and of course its stressing me out.

Wondering what you consider to be “normal check in” since other than an international flight I can’t recall the last time I went anywhere near the ticket counter! My order of check in would be: (1) app; (2) website; (3) kiosk; (4) ticket counter….

FlyerAl

Don't stress. It's a glitch that I've encountered about 50% of the time when using BXP1s. Online check-in doesn't work (demanding upgrade stickers), but the kiosk works fine. After printing from the kiosk you'll be able to pull up the mobile BP using the AA app.

BeantownFlyer

Just went to check in for my 6:20am flight tomorrow. My wife (who has no status and got split to her own record) had no issue checking in. For me it insisted that I buy 2 additional stickers if I wanted to check in (which I did to avoid having to get to MIA even earlier than 5:20am…). Hopefully they don’t get pulled but in any event this is an annoying system issue.